GitHub is undergoing a full-blown overhaul as execs and employees depart

> believe that discriminating against white men is okay because they enjoy "white privilege", whatever that is

> It is hard to distinguish the anti-white vitriol I see on this page from the antisemitism of yesteryear. It was often said that Jews were over-represented in various occupations not because their industriousness, intelligence or other virtues, but because of devious trickery (they plot together to deprive others of opportunities). I fail to see how the arguments regarding white men are any different.

It's because you don't even make an attempt to understand the terms of the debate. White privilege is a structural, societal-level advantage that white people have stemming from centuries of economic and cultural disenfranchisement of ethnic minorities, that while you personally can't change, can be worked towards overcoming it. Educate yourself before you throw Godwins around.

https://library.gv.com/unconscious-bias-at-work-22e698e9b2d#...

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case...

The current dominant themes in certain feminism & diversity cliques in our community are openly hostile towards me. I'm a male. I'm white. I'm middle class. I'm heterosexual.

I'm also a leader. I'm a parent of two daughters. My mother had to fight sexism issues in her career. I am supportive of inclusion & diversity. I am trying to raise my girls to be empowered, confident & curious. But the dominant themes in current diversity & feminist circles are so racist & sexist towards me that my first impulse is outrage.

For those of you who share this impulse- I want to provide the piece of perspective that helps me manage my frustration: Our culture operates under a pendulum. Right now, it's bad, but it will swing back.

There are “equality” people who are openly hostile to certain categories of humans based on gender, sexuality & race. This has happened before and it will happen again.

The pendulum will swing back and we'll look back at these people in the same way as certain stale feminists & race marketeers of the 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s etc. The leaders of these ideas in the tech community who focus on gender & race over building products that people want will not last. They get louder & shriller, but wielding bigotry to fight bigotry always fertilizes suspicion.

You can't fight exclusion with exclusion. So don’t worry about these themes. If people aren’t bitching about their bigotry, their relevance wanes.

Just keep trying to do big things. If someone calls you privileged, it doesn't mean it wasn't hard & that you didn't earn it. You don’t have to argue with every person who writes something stupid on the Internet. To hell with those bigots. Their misery does not earn them the right to rob you of your own self worth and success. Diversity means that all perspectives deserve to be heard. It is ok that someone uses the word diversity to ward off white folks from leading. The community eventually rejects this kind of bigotry.

You can find these people worthy of your contempt and still be supportive of diversity & equality. Now ignore these fools and go build your shit.

It's not some grand conspiracy. There's no secret committee toasting to their success. It's just what has happened when the press and a lot of people believe all of the vitriol that comes out of people like Jackson and Sharpton, or lesser known race-baiters in other communities. South Park did a whole episode about this phenomenon (episode titled "With apologies to Jesse Jackson").

I've been a member of multiple institutions that have fallen on the wrong end of this kind of activism. My Catholic high school has been dragged through the local media for not listing a gay marriage in the Marriages section of the alumni magazine. The inter-fraternity council at my alma mater has a speech code for offensive language and a dress code for offensive clothing, like Indian mascots. I saw the behind-the-scenes arm-twisting by the college administration to make them do it. Every big tech company has to pay the protection money here too. Jesse Jackson and his allies in Congress started saying that the tech industry was racist for not having enough black people, a totally absurd accusation because the only reason why there aren't many black employees is that there aren't many black applicants. Then he got invited to a few board meetings, extracted some donations, and went on his way.

It's both or neither depending on how you want to look at it. The problem isn't any website or subculture, the problem is the entire overarching culture being created by digital natives that are coming into their own.

Internet induced sociopathy has infected an entire generation. No conversation is ever a conservation, everything is a performance for the benefit of third parties. Even face to face every conversion is haunted by what will this sound like when it is posted online. No one deserves the benefit of the doubt because they aren't real people, just words on a screen.

It's the so-called SJWs and the alt-right. It's GG and anti-GG. It's facebook and tumblr and twitter and reddit and lord knows 4chan.

It's sick, it's no ones fault, it's probably unfixable and that's heartbreaking.

How do bad interview processes prove that meritocracy doesn't work?